“Of course you will.”
“Mate, continue to defy me and you will be over my knee upon your return.”
Thatmade me hot. “You promise?” With that teasing remark—and, I was sure, my desire for exactly that kind of play winging across the stars to him through whatever miracle of quantum physics made these collars work over long distances—I ended the comm and walked over to Rachel. “So, tell me what we’ve got.”
She was shoving sample collection rods into the sand along the edge of the surf. The waves here were small, perhaps only two or three feet tall. As I scanned the water, I had to assume there was no coral or offshore drop-off to form larger waves.
“Well, we’ve got new data since we last spoke. The Coalition telescopes picked up an anomaly in the atmospheric temperature here. Rapid changes for no apparent reason. The planet has been warming, the clouds are thinning, and AI analysis shows a dangerous decline in the planet’s ability to support life if the trend continues.”
I pointed to the wall of bright, brilliant flowers and foliage lining one cliff face. “Clearly this issue hasn’t been going on for long. The plant life is still thriving.” I inspected the water, what I could see of it. “And I don’t see any abnormal blooms in the water here.”
She turned her head. “Right. No dead animal carcasses either. We need to figure out what’s going on before the shift endangers all life on the planet. I don’t want this planet to die like The Colony.”
“That’s what happened there?”
She nodded. “There was an imbalance and everything died off. Maybe a couple thousand years ago, maybe a million. We don’t really know. That’s why we can’t walk around outside of the bases without helmets for very long. The atmosphere sucks.” She rapped her knuckles on the glass of hers. “But there used to be water on The Colony. Lots of it. They have fossils all over the place.
“And all the water just what? Disappeared?”
“Apparently.”
“Wow. Okay. So, is it just hydrogen levels that are off here?”
“Hydrogen is low. Oxygen is high. The ocean’s salinity level is fluctuating. It’s like everything just went crazy. Weird, right?” I could see her frown, even through the helmet. “As if something is stealing hydrogen. The amount of water on the entire planet is down nearly two percent since we first received the disturbing data.”
“Holy shit.” That didn’t sound like a lot, but when an entire planet’s ecosystem was involved, that two percent would make a huge difference.
I took several of the sampling sticks and walked to the edge of the beach, looked out over the water. I wanted to go out there and swim. Feel the… wetness against my skin. The buoyancy. The shift and movement of the water. I couldn’t deny it. But I wasn’t a complete idiot. “Is it fresh or salt water?”
She thumbed toward the water. “Using Earth as a comparison, the water here is halfway between the two. Data shows freshwater streams, rivers and lakes that feed into this cove, and a vast body of salt water about the size of the Atlantic out there. So, in this cove, it’s about half and half.”
“Brackish. Got it.” I smiled and tried to breathe it in, but the helmet didn’t let me.
“So, no huge sharks out there?” I asked. Sharks, at least Earth sharks, lived in salt water. Alligators went for fresh water. But then there was Captain Hook and the giant Seawater Crocodile that had taken his hand. Crocodiles loved brackish water on Earth. And they had no qualms about helping themselves to a tasty human. “Crocodiles? Giant squid? Any sort of space beasts out there that might eat us if we get too close to the edge?”
Rachel laughed. “Oh, yeah. No sharks. Squid, they’d be deep so I’m not really sure. As for here, I’ll say probably not. The water is only about thirty or forty feet deep until you get out past the rocks. But animals aren’t my turf. Giram!” she called.
A huge guy turned around, strode over. He was slightly taller than Surnen and Trax, and his shoulders were broader. Rachel introduced him to me as an Atlan. Holy shit, the guy was huge. “Any dangerous creatures out there in the water?”
His piercing dark eyes met mine. “None, my lady.” While he was answering Rachel’s question, he was looking at me. I realized then that both of us were to be called my lady. “I have been monitoring these coordinates for a week in preparation for our visit. No underwater data indicates any kind of life form that would be considered dangerous.”
“Thank you,” she replied. He bowed and returned to his task—which appeared to be watching over us while we worked—and I buried my disappointment at not being able to come face-to-face with a Valuri version of a dolphin or whale.
I helped Rachel with collecting samples, then watched as she analyzed them with some fancy space-age machinery. We worked over an hour and allowed the computer to process the data. As a team, we stared at the results.
“We were right. This planet is losing hydrogen. There is more oxygen in the atmosphere than there was a week ago,” she said, then looked around. “The question is, how? Why?”
“There’s no data that indicates a specific location at issue,” Giram replied. Two others in the group agreed.
“How can a planet just lose water? Is that even possible?” I asked, looking out over the murky color. “Unless…”
Everyone faced me, silently waiting for my possibility.
“I know you said you were monitoring the water level, but did you test the salinity or carbon dioxide levels in the water itself? What if it’s not just hydrogen? What if, somehow, the ocean is actually losing water? Is the planet forming new, larger ice caps? Glaciers? Is the humidity higher? Something’s wrong with the water cycle. I assume this planet has trackable weather patterns, and this close to water, the weather would be impacted by the water itself.”
“You’re saying that water is going where? Into a new North Pole?”
“I don’t know yet, but would that account for the fluctuations in your readings?”